


Unreachable Expectations

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay Movies)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Constipation, Exhaustion, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, ITS NOT THAT BAD I SWEAR, Overworking, Protective Raphael (TMNT), leo is a shit to donnie but raph sorts him out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18545617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Raph isn't pleased with the amount of work Leo is giving Donnie lately, and how he never seems to be satisfied by the outcome Donnie produces.Sure, Leo's the leader, but enough is enough, and Raph is more than happy to sort him out.





	Unreachable Expectations

Raph had his head down and his fists wrapped in bandages as he wailed away at his boxing bag on the top floor when he heard it. He paused what he was doing and held the swinging boxing bag in his hands as he listened to Leo down below and Donnie apologizing profusely.

“I’m sorry Leo, I promise it won’t happen again. It’ll be finished, I swear.”

“You said that last time, Donnie. What’s the point me of giving you tasks if you just don’t do what I ask you to do?”

“I just need more time Leo and we’ve been really busy lately and I just didn’t think that rushing it would be the best course of action for something like this! What if something went wrong while I was making it? What if nothing went wrong until we used it and then something horrible would happen? What if-”

Leo cut him off and listening from above, Raph gnashed his teeth together. “Save it, Donnie. We’ll have to discuss it some other time and figure out what we’re going to do. Just… I don’t know. Go work on something else for a while.”

There was a pause and Raph was sure for a moment that Donnie had left, but then his sad, dejected voice broke the silence. “Sorry, Leo. I uh, I promise I’ll be better next time.” And then he was gone, pulling away from Leo and walking down the halls with his arms wrapped around himself.

As Donnie passed under him, Raph leapt down from his perch on the upper level and landed behind Donnie, who spun around to face him with confusion and just a little bit of surprise. It may have been a little mean of him to jump down behind him like that, but Raph knew how unaware Donnie was when he was in his own head, so he knew it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. “You alright?”

Donnie wiped a hand across his face, smearing dirt and grease just below his nose. “Oh yeah, yeah I’m alright.” He reached up and fiddled with one of the many gadgets that dangled from the giant pack he wore on his shell. “I just had some things to take care of. Everything’s good.”

“Uh huh,” Raph said, unconvinced. He jerked his thumb behind him where Leo was currently turning the corner into the other room. “Was our Fearless Leader giving you a hard time again?”

“N-no, not at all,” Donnie blanched, shuffling his feet and taking an anxious step back. “No, he just reminded me about all the work I have still to do, that’s all. Nothing else.” He waved awkwardly back towards the opposite room. “I uh, I have a lot to work on so if I could just…”

“Sure Donnie,” Raph said, taking a few steps back. “Go do what you need to do. Give a shout when Mikey finishes cooking.” And then Donnie was turning on his heel and sprinting away back down the halls. After a moment, the repetitive ruckus of Mikey practising on his drum set was silenced and Raph could hear his two youngest brothers conversing in hushed tones.

Once Raph was sure that Donnie was defiantly far enough away, he turned and walked down the corridor that Donnie had come from and caught up to Leo’s retreating back. Before Leo could even turn around to decipher whose long strides were following his own, Raph grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and shoved him hard against the wall. Leo glared at him with annoyance. “What’s your deal, Raph?”

“I think,” Raph growled, low and deep in his chest. “That you and me need to have a little talk.”

“Something must be wrong. This isn’t like you.” Leo pushed Raph’s fist off of his shoulder and moved away from the wall, sticking his chest out and his chin up. “Using your words instead of your fists for a change? You must be running a fever. You should get Donnie to check up on you.”

Raph scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest if only to keep his hands trapped and to prevent them from doing anything brash or something he would regret. “You know, I would, but it seems like he’s already pretty busy busting his balls over that stupid little project you set him. Wouldn’t want to disturb him and make him mess it up again, would I?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Raph?” Leo sighed and looked about to turn away but Raph pulled his lips back and snarled and Leo, wisely, stayed where he was.

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t just finish yelling at Don,” Raph kept his voice low and pitched to carry only to Leo but by the way his brother shuffled and took a step back, it still had his desired effect. “What’s he done that’s so terrible, huh? He didn’t sharpen your katanas’ sharp enough? He wasn’t your pet for long enough? He didn’t do what he was told? He made a mistake? Was that it? Were you giving our little brother crap because of a mistake?”

Leo brought his hands up and pushed Raph in the chest in an attempt to put some distance between them, but Raph refused to budge. “Shove off Raph, it’s none of your business what gets discussed between me and Donnie. Should we add eavesdropping to the list of things that make you a pain in my shell?”

“Yeah, laugh it off all you want, Leo,” Raph said. “Turn your shell on me if you just can’t stand to see my face, but you’re going to listen to what I have to say for just once in your god damn life.”

Scoffing, Leo folded his arms over his chest, tapped his foot on the metal grating beneath them, and waited. Nothing but the dripping of a far off and rusted tap onto the metal floor or the run-off under it and Mikey’s repetitive banging on his drum set broke their tense silence. Raph took a deep breath and ploughed through. “You’re being way too hard on Don. He follows your orders like a good little dog and does whatever you ask of him whenever you ask, but the moment he makes any sort of mistake, you throw him to the wolves as if he does nothing but make mistakes.”

“Oh, get lost Raph, as if you haven’t lost your temper with him before.” Leo snapped and Raph had to grab his arm to prevent him from walking away.

“Of course I have,” Raph tightened his hold on Leo’s arm when he tried to pull away. “But that’s normally because he’s still awake at 3 in the morning and hasn’t slept for a week or hasn’t eaten in days or because he’s too busy filling out all of your stupid requests for him to take care of himself for a change. Not because I think that he isn’t pulling his load or that his mistakes are more important than his achievements.”

“Really?” Leo marched forward and put his face right up in Raph’s. “Because from where I stand, you give him just as much crap as the rest of us do.”

Raph’s sour mood curdled even more and he turned his lip up in disgust. “That’s not true and you know it, hard head. I’m not saying you don’t care about him at all, but you expect too much from him. Like with the purple ooze- he was so excited to tell you what it did and you shut him down and forced him to keep it a secret from the rest of us. He follows your orders blindly and without question and in return you treat him like he’s nothing but mud on your feet or dry blood on your blade.”

There was a thin veil of barely-restrained anger in every fibre of Leo’s being, but Raph couldn’t understand why. It was him who was supposed to be angry, not Leo. “Just because you don’t follow orders doesn’t mean it’s unusual for other people to. In fact, it’s expected. Don’t think less of Don just because he does what he’s told- unlike you and Mikey.”

“It’s got nothing to do with what orders he follows,” Raph snapped. “It’s that he follows orders, even if they rob him of being happy. He works with machines but that doesn’t mean he is one, but you treat him like a robot. He has feelings and emotions and most of the time the orders he follows goes against everything he believes in.”

“He’s never brought it up with me,” Leo rebutted the volume in his voice was slowly lowering and was filled with less and less anger.

“Why would he? He wants to follow your orders and do what he’s told.” Seeing his brother’s hostility drain out of him, Raph lowered his own voice to a low growl instead of a roar of rage. “I’m not telling you that you’re doing anything wrong, but maybe you’re getting too used to him following your orders without question and you’re… I don’t know… taking it for granted?”

Leo leant his shell against the door as if all the energy left him, head bowed. “I hope not. I… try and keep my orders and requests reasonable but… sometimes they might get away from me. I just didn’t realize how much I was asking of you.”

“Not of us,” Raph corrected because it was true- neither he or Mikey enjoyed being told what to do by anyone and outside of battle was relied upon very little, so they got away without much of the ordering. “But Donnie does more for us all then I think we realize. He hardly gets any sleep most nights and I’m almost positive at this point that he’s surviving mostly on coffee and willpower at this point. He enjoys the work he does and until he stops having fun with it, then I’m going to let him continue with it. But I don’t… _yell_ at him when he gets things wrong. Don’t get impatient with him. Don’t be disappointed when he doesn’t get it right the first time. You know that sometimes he gets slow days and he can’t work on his tech or his inventions. Those days he gets a break, even when he doesn’t want one.” He reached over and slapped Leo on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Remember? You taught us that one.”

“Yeah,” Leo laughed softly, something in his voice that Raph couldn’t identify. He sent Raph a sideways look. “When did you get to be so wise? I’m supposed to be the wise one. Mikey’s the funny one. Donnie is the smart one. You’re supposed to hit things.”

“Listen, smartass, I pay attention to you sometimes,” Raph rolled his eyes and he was about to reply when he heard the loud pounding footsteps of one of his other brothers approaching.

Donnie rounded the corner with his goggles skewed unevenly on his face and a whole heap of vials in his hand along with some tech that Raph couldn’t even begin to decipher. “Leo, Leo!” he announced excitably as he rounded the corner, but there was an undertone of tiredness in his words as well. “I think I did it this time- I really think I was able to synthesize the formula into a usable and non-combustible form that we should able to put into effect almost immediately."

Raph nudged his brother gently and Leo turned towards his brother with a small smile on his lips. He placed a heavy, brotherly hand on Donnie’s shoulder. “That’s great, Don. Thank you for doing that, I’ll be a great help. You’ve done a lot of good work today. Why don’t you go and take a break for a bit? Put your feed up. Take a load off.”

“Uh,” Donnie blinked rapidly, taken off guard. “Is that… is that an order?”

“If you’d like to take it as one, then sure,” Leo laughed and despite it all, Raph couldn’t help but chuckle behind him. “Go, rest. Everything will be there when you go back to it. You deserve a little you-time.”

A faint red glow was starting to spread across the scales on Donnie’s face and his feet shuffled on the ground. “Oh, uh, thanks, Leo. I guess… I guess I’ll see you later.”

And then he was turning around and leaving, his brothers left with nothing but his retreating shell weighted down by the heavy tech-pack, and Leo turned to Raph with a crook to his lip and a raised eyebrow. “How was that? Better?”

Chucking deep in his chest, Raph clapped his brother on the back and shook him in that way bigger, annoying little brothers do. “Yeah, Fearless Leader. You did better. Let’s see how long you can keep this up- Mikey and I will be taking bets.”


End file.
